An ink pen is internally provided with an ink reservoir for storing an amount of ink therein. When using the ink pen to write, the ink in the ink reservoir is supplied to a felt tip of the ink pen via an ink feeder, so that a user can write with the felt tip.
FIG. 1 is a fragmentary longitudinal sectional view showing a conventional ink feeder mounted in a conventional felt-tip ink pen. As shown, the conventional ink feeder is usually a ring-shaped sponge 11 mounted around a felt tip 12. The ring-shaped sponge 11 communicates with an ink reservoir 13 in the ink pen, so as to absorb ink from the ink reservoir 13 and then feeds the ink to the felt tip 12 for writing.
The above-described felt-tip ink pen with an ink feeder made of a ring-shaped sponge 11 has the following disadvantages in terms of its manufacture and use: (1) the ring-shaped sponge is a very soft and flexible member and accordingly, could not be handled along with other components using a machine on an automated production line to assemble the ink pen. For instance, it is impossible to keep the ring-shaped sponge non-deformed when it is clamped and delivered by a robot for the purpose of completing automated assembly of the ink pen. Therefore, the soft ring-shaped sponge must be manually handled during the assembly, and it is of course troublesome and time-consuming to do so. (2) When the ink feeder made of the ring-shaped sponge is saturated with ink, the absorbed ink tends to leak out of the ink pen to result in lowered writing quality.
Therefore, due to the above-mentioned reasons, the conventional felt-tip ink pen and the sponge-made ink feeder thereof is not ideal in terms of their applicability.